3205 African Penguins, the one on the left is the baby. The other two are probably a mating pair since they mate for life.
3216 Emperor Penguins. The one on the left with the white spots on his lower back is the baby. He’s half into his adult feathers so he’s not all that young.
3236 Diana with Big Bird. He eventually had to be banished so we could collect a larger group.
3259 Diana with the Three Stooges. They were very cooperative in sharing the nectar while standing on the rim of the cup three across.
3306 This is the hornbill flying over the audience at the bird show. I have to admit that I enhanced him a little so he was easier to see. I was sitting near the top so I had to wait for him to get high enough for a good picture.
3348 The unusual buildings on the waterfront as we sailed out of Singapore. Not many straight lines on those structures. They must have been a success because they’re building another set with almost the same design near the Cruise Ship Pier.
Oct 27 – Singapore. Today we are taking it easy again. We are going to the Jurong Bird Paradise. It’s supposed to be a great place to see birds both native and from the rest of Southeast Asia and associated islands. It’s right on the outskirts of the city so it’s not a long trek to get there.
Turns out it is a beautiful place. The entrance is organized a lot like the entrance to what used to be called the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park, but is now called the Safari something or other. That is to say, nicely designed and in this case beautifully landscaped. The arches over the pathways leading from the ticket taker to the park, there are three different paths to take, look like large vines and are planted with various orchids and dangling plants that look a lot like the Spanish moss prevalent in the deep south of the US.
Directly inside is a display of South African penguins. These are Magellanic penguins that can tolerate high temperatures and lots of sun so their enclosure is outdoors. They are black footed birds that nest in the soil. The only non-adults I saw were almost as large as the adults. Their overall color is a blue-gray tone and their white areas are not well developed or defined. Before the days of political correctness they were called Jackass Penguins because their call sounds exactly like a jackass braying.
Directly across the wide walkway is Penguin Coast, an enclosure for the other types of birds that need the cold and subdued light to remain healthy. They control the lighting inside the enclosure to mimic Antarctica. It’s usually pretty dark inside these types of habitats and using a flash is not a good idea for both photographic (there’s a thick sheet of glass between you and the penguins) and penguin considerations because the bright flashes are not good for either their health or emotional situation. Of course, that doesn’t stop many people from flashing away. You think, in this digital age, they would see the terrible results of this practice but I guess not.
In addition to Emperor and Adelie penguins they had Puffins (Atlantic I believe), Inca Terns and Black-legged Kittiwakes inside the enclosure. The glass wall extended to about 6 feet below the surface of the water that ran the length of the display so you could see the acrobatics and speed of the penguins in the water. Again almost all the penguins were adults, I only spotted one immature Emperor, easily spotted because of his black and white back feathers. Even his were half molted to the adult solid ,shiny black.
They have a hop-on-off tram that circles the park and we hopped on to ride to the other side of the park with the plan of walking back through it to the entrance. We passed one stop before arriving at the Lory Loft. This large aviary is home to several species of Lorikeets. These smallish and friendly members of the parrot family feed almost exclusively on the nectar of flowers. Inside they sell little shallow cups of fruit juice with pulp that the birds recognize as food. Diana loves feeding animals so I went to the counter to buy a cup. As soon as the person handed it to me one of the larger species jumped onto my shoulder and started walking down my arm to the cup.
As I headed for Diana he took up residence on my hand and started drinking. When I started to hand the cup to Diana he hopped on the rim with both feet and rode it over to her. He was not about to abandon his lunch. She tolerated him until he started getting aggressive toward the smaller birds that wanted to share his snack and so to discourage this rude behavior we shooed him away and let others have a turn. (I wish it were that simple to deal with the few rude and totally self-centered people on the ship.)
After Big Bird was banished, three smaller birds, all willing to share a perch on the rim of the cup, had a great time taking turns putting their heads into it to drink. For some reason I started calling them the Three Stooges even though they got along much better than that trio of nitwits.
From there we walked back past the hornbill, royal pigeon, pelican, duck, flamingo, birds of prey and stork exhibits to see the Birds at Play show. It was a fun show that started with a parade of flamingos doing laps around the stage, flapping theirThe wings. They had several different birds fly out over the audience and land on the arms of their assistants stationed at spots around the theater. They let a pair of toucans land on the arms of a volunteer near the top of the arena. She seemed very pleased to have them visit but was clearly shocked at how heavy they were.
Two Macaws came out and had a race to see which one could put 5 Ping-Pong balls into the hole in a tree stump first. Then they found 3 volunteers to hold hoops about 30 inches in diameter at the center and two sides of the theater. The birds flew in a circle through the hoops. That brought them low over the audience and provided everyone with a good view of a large parrot in flight. Then they had them fly the course each in the opposite direction. They had to time the center hoop because there’s no way that the birds could pass each other in the hoop. They did pass within 4 feet of the hoop so their timing was pretty good. The last lap was only done by one of the birds. For this lap they filled the center hoop in with thin paper except for about a 5 inch in diameter hole at the center. The macaw flew right through the paper. I’m pretty sure this unnatural behavior was a long time in the training. For a finale, they had about a half dozen macaws fly in circles around the theater from different locations at the top of the seating area and land across the front of the stage. All that color in the air at one time made for a great visual.
On the way back to the ship we had to pass through the Harborfront Center. We took that opportunity to spend the last of our Singapore $. I bought some more preserved plums; these were very small, about the size of a medium grape. Diana got some post cards and dried mango strips and that was the last of our local money.
The sail away from Singapore was very nice. This is a very busy port with 400-600 ships waiting to be offloaded at any given time. In the middle 60s the port hired IBM to come over and computerize port operations and that gave them such a big advantage in turnaround time that the port grew to be the largest in Asia. Shanghai has taken that title from them in recent years but they are still second and remain more efficient that any port in the area.
On the way out we passed some very modern and unusual apartment buildings designed by the same person who designed the building at ground zero.
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